Destro Lock vs. HM Spine Tendon

I was wondering if any experts could help me formulate the optimal spell rotation for Tendon. I'm lagging behind in damage quite a bit.

One hinderance is that I have to apply COE in my group, so that takes a GCD. I use a soul shard Soul Fire to start, apply Immo then Corruption, Conflag, Shadowflame, and then it seems like I just have to do standard rotations of chaos bolt, incin, incin - then i get a non-backdraft incin, then conflag, etc.

A mistake I was making was not manually redirecting my pet right away. I also have to make sure I pop my cooldowns in advance.

Since the only damage that matters is what you do to the tendons,, I recommend you purchase Bottled Wishes from the VP vendor. It gives an incredible Int boost for 15 seconds. Perfect for the time frame that the tendon is attackable.

Also, make sure you save your Demom Soul and use it right after Conflag so it is up for your empowered Chaos Bolts and Incinerates. [edit: i have it macro'd to Conflag to if I hit shift, it is used with conflag.]

For demon soul, its up long enough that i prefer to pre-cast it before the tendon is exposed. It will still last for most of the burn, and i don't have any GCD's to spare during the 18 seconds, i feel.

For demon soul, its up long enough that i prefer to pre-cast it before the tendon is exposed. It will still last for most of the burn, and i don't have any GCD's to spare during the 18 seconds, i feel.

Also, it also grants immolate extra crit during it's duration, one of your highest priority spells, so if anything I believe you should be using it in coordination with immolate rather than chaos bolt.

Shadowflame is 6s duration DoT on 12s CD, Tendon is up for 19s. If you use Shadowflame within the first ~1.5s of the Tendon being targetable (/targetexact Burning Tendons) you'll get 2 uses of SF with the final tick of the 2nd hitting just before it becomes inactive. So, you should probs start Immolate -> Shadowflame -> Conflag -> Doom.

With decent Haste reducing your GCD, that Doom should get its first 15s tick just in time before the Tendon becomes inactive, making it worth its ET. I'm not 100% up to date with Destruction, so I'm not sure about Corruption's DPET for it. You should find this in SimCraft for your gear to judge how long it must be on the Tendon for it to be worth the GCD.

Basically, you need to consider CDs and especially DPET for the 19s window in order to formulate an optimal usage of your GCDs for that period.

Edit: Also, the Improved Soul Fire buff lasts 20s, so you should time a Soul Fire to hit a Blood just before the Tendon becomes active, saving yourself a GCD. Then pop DS + Soulburn (delayed SB for 1s instead of using for the SF so as to not waste any uptime, it's only 15s buff) and go Immolate -> Shadowflame -> Conflag -> Doom -> Corruption (assuming its DPET is higher than CB) -> Chaos Bolt -> Incinerate spam. Shadowflame, Conflag and Chaos Bolt again on CD, do not waste a GCD refreshing Doom/Corruption.

Note that if you Hero for one of the Tendons, don't bother with Chaos Bolt and just Incinerate instead. With Hero the cast will probably be lower than your GCD which just makes things awkward.

It might take a bit of practice to actually get it down, but im assuming that you also are the sole provider of 5 percent crit debuff. If i were you i would conflag the amalg 8 secs before the tendon lift. This will give you backdraft to start the tendons as well as having conflag off cd shortly thereafter. Start with Coe and incinerate to apply the debuffs then go immolate sflame doom conflag. Note the only use for the backdraft pre lift is to have a quicker incinerate to apply the debuff
Also note that warlocks are very often lower than most people on tendons. Its just how it works. I believe the best chance to do any remotely acceptable damage is to be demo and even that would require some RNG to reset metas for each lift.